Akatsuki no Yona

Honestly, I've kind of outgrown the whole Shoujo manga thing. But it's really AMAZING to see a female character who starts off naive and sheltered come into her own in a more natural way. Like usually there's a lot of melodrama or she turns into a damsel in distress, but Yona is absolutely amazing! She's humble, sensible, vulnerable. Yet, she's also strong and resilient. All the characters show growth and the narrative is complex without being contrived. It's quite a well done manga in my opinion. Would HIGHLY recommend

I love it so far. It's really good, but I really wish that the anime would hurry up. （ ｉ _ ｉ )
I'm not a very patient person, and the fans are waiting.

Friends: are angry fangirls

It's just...taking forever. It's starting to make me sad/mad/whatever else. I am really just...(I honestly don't know), but please hurry up. I am really craving it right now, and I might explode (don't worry, it's a habit of mine, though you might feel my feelings from your location) and I really want to watch the rest and see my little cinnamon rolls bake the mean Soo-Won cinnamon roll.
I know I'm obviously not the only one waiting for the anime, so please hurry.

Yeah.... I totally love it. Me. A twenty year old who has sworn off shoujo or so i thought. This thing made me feel like I am 12 years old again, afraid to talk to boys and crushes are the moat important thing in the world and then slowly realizing that duh- it is so totally not.

Btw- if it counts i watched the anime and then followed the manga. So addicting. It's like the illegitimate daughter of Saiunkoku Monogatari and Fuushigi Yuugi and i am a real sucker for reverse harems that have that guardian theme, world travel, quest type, backpacking, character developing tropes. I mean come on- Akatsuki no Yona brought me straight back to my roots. It made me remember why i even liked anime and manga at the first place.

Oh and it has that ability too! They are able to make you feel for characters even though they've only been around for a couple of pages. It also gets real too - not everyone here gets a happy hippy yehey ending. If they die, they really die. When they bleed they really bleed. There's no quick fix. And btw, Yona is tots better than Miaka. Hahahaha. Love Miaka but lord, that girl is dumb. Yona gets beaten up for reals and she actually trains, she's not one of those Mary Sue types that just randomly picks a weapon and then realizes that she is a natural.

Damn it. Just pick it up. I was really happy that i did.

Oh yeah! And the characters! Omygawd. I love them all. I cant pick a clear bae. But like one of the peope who have commented here said i too want to see Hak at least walk away just one. That would be interesting! I like Soo Won too! Dude has conviction- he's not tye stereotypical bad guy and he is pretty clever- true a little backstabbing but i want him in on my team. Oh and yoon and the dragons dont get me started, sister! Oh god. I like hiw different each of their clans are! Background stoties though ftw. I just dont want it to get to the point where we are all going to go sappy knowing yona is bot going to end up with one of them because i predict that by the end of this-- they might be dead. I hope that's just me.

16 volumes in and I can't figure out why I'd continue reading this series. Nothing has changed in regards to the characters which is sad considering how bland they are. It's to the point where I despise the thought of seeing them repeat the same actions that I've already witnessed countless times before.

This one waves as sin and cosin, At times it a great story and at times it's hard to read, same for the chars, some are great some ain't and at time you find events and actions to go against what would be considered consistent. Or Yona, at times a good char I root for and at times I wanna see her suffer. Or Hak which I often hope to see him walk away, or Soo-won, etc.
Also, as usual with this kinds of mangas the story progression seams to get slower as it continues, I get the impression that not nearly as much happened in the 8 volumes following the anime compared to the 8 animated ones.
All in all it's a good manga and I enjoy reading it, thou I'm still unconvinced till it decides to break the forced status-quo achived very early in the saga and make some actual progress to the story instead of going around in circles.

Shoujo manga are usually a bit hard to digest for me.... but this was great.

I love every single arc of this story--and the heroine is my favorite character! Her independence and charming ways are done pretty well, while there are doses of cliches here and there.

Now, although I have some problems with the mini-harem she has.... I'm loving the moral ambiguity of many of the characters. The new king is another one of my favorites--he is so complex despite the lack of panel coverage.

A majority of the characters are multi-dimensional, thank goodness.

This isn't your typical shoujo, regardless of what other commentators would have you believe. There are going to be differing tastes when it comes to mixing genre's, in fact it's rarely done well. In the case of Akatsuki no Yona (AnY), it's succeeded in almost every way.

Let's start with the characters since they have been accused of being shoujo cut-outs. I couldn't disagree more, the characters are unique and very strong in their personalities. I consider bad character writing to be where a personality breaks its mold or tries to be everything to everyone. You see this in alot of shounen manga/anime, but in AnY, the characters are all very much different and fill their roles very well. What makes the characters especially good here, is that they all have solid and personal motivations that are believable. Almost every character wants something different even if they're paths align. The characters are also written almost morally ambiguous; in other words, there are no black and white, good and evil characters. This is far closer to reality. What one person considers evil, is often justified through subtle writing, whether you agree with their justifications or not. This is obvious with Su-won and Yona, I personally hate Su-Won but the dynamic between those two characters is refreshing. Su-won isn't a caricature written as a place holder of the evil bad guy. He has is own beliefs and ideals, even if they clash with the main character. That builds enormous tension and plays off the strength of the differing personalities. It creates so many dynamics between Hak, Su-Won and Yona and gives the story even more depth.

I would say, without a doubt, the character writing is this manga's strongest point and what makes it interesting. Even if this had a weak story / plot, the characters could pull it through. Fortunately, the story and setting are very interesting even if its been done before. If you were to criticize anything, it would have to be story. It's simplistic and relatively straight forward on one hand, and yet it's propped up by the interesting political schemes and world building the author juggles. It never really jumps in too deep, but it also doesn't resort to deus-ex-machina machinations either. This keeps it light and allows the reader to grasp the deep subtleties that are around every corner.

The reason this works is down to the pacing. So far the story hasn't stagnated at all, but moved briskly through the story while retaining alot of the mystery and intrigue that hooked you at volume 1. The best writers know how to keep you engaged through mystery by giving you what you want at the right moments, and AnY is no exception. What i dislike, probably the most, out of stories is seeing the end of a goalpost and being hand-fed clues to how it all ends. I have no idea how the author will resolve the most interesting bits of this story, and that is a good thing. The only draw back to this approach is that when building it up so much the resolution can often times not meet your expectations. So far though it has blown away my expectations and so i have high hopes for all the story weaving that this tapestry offers.

I don't want to pretend that AnY is a masterpiece of literature, but for me the most important element of manga is enjoyment. I've seen and read hundreds of anime/manga and its rare to come across something like AnY that keeps alot of the good elements of manga genre's and twists / plays with them in different and exciting ways. Not everyone is going to like a certain manga, and some people will absolutely not like the large combination of genre's that this offers, but when it's done right I think it transcends even manga that are masterpieces in their respective genres. Shoujo is definitely not my style, but it's appeal is reaches far beyond that. This is simply a good, fun read. And I hope you give it a chance because it has something for everyone.

I honestly don't like him. Throughout the story there are implications that the old king was a good person, but a bad ruler and that he's somewhat justified, but there is no evidence of him trying to end corruption or any of the problems yona & crew face. He's just a tyrant, which isn't bad in and of itself, but he's presented without flaws and I feel like things just go his way because they do. After the chapters he's in Yona reflects on what happened before and grows a little as a character, so just skip ahead and you wont miss much. Otherwise I like the manga.

I read over 40 chapters and ended up skimming to the latest scanlation (ch 72). I hoped to like this one, but the characters are all predictable after a couple chapters of knowing them. I know many shoujo fans love this, however, as someone who has read a lot of shoujo in the past and was looking for something refreshing from the cliches, seeing all the typical shoujo/harem scenes so often in this series is just disappointing imo (ex: the guys all attracted to Yona somehow, and it's lightly implied romantically at some point; while the bantering is funny, there's very little serious relationship building between the main male protags that doesn't involve Yona. Only Yona's relationship with each guy is focused; etc). I had hoped that by 'harem' it only meant 'one girl surrounded by males' without the 'everyone falling for that girl' implication and sticking with primarily friendship, seeing how the story started off surprisingly dark and ratings are high, but I had apparently expected too much.

Now that the anime has proceeded into the storyline enough let me just say as avid reader of shoujo manga this is a must read. I was literally praying that Jae-ha's voice be Junichi Suwabe and it is and it's freakin amazing, anime/manga both are great and any true shoujo lover this is a must read/see!

This one is so worth the read. Some may be put off initially by the spoiled naive princess from the beginning and her silly crush on her cousin Soo-Won (I was), but really, that's just the start of it. She won't be your weak, helpless damsel in distress heroine for long, which is probably why the anime showed a good size glimpse of the stronger future Yona with all her kick-butt traveling companions.

Which brings me to why I REALLY love this manga. It's fantasy elements, fights, and political intrigue are great, yes, but it's really the characters and character development that make this manga. There's not one static, boring character. Yona herself, who I thought would be annoying, is genuinely determined to be stronger after the tragedy of what her bishie cousin did to her father and tried to do to her and her close friend bodyguard Hak. Instead of being flung about and pulled along by the story as a victim she is the one that purposely progresses it once she finds her determination and purpose. Hak, who easily could have been just a suave clone of every hero bodyguard in every other manga out there, is hilarious, and while he does present a romantic interest, that isn't the only reason he's there. He's a beast of a fighter, a sarcastic troll when he wants to be, and has every bit as much complexity as any other character, as well as his own motivations for fighting and mixed feelings toward his former friend Soo-Won.

And actually, Soo-won himself is not as simple to figure out as one would initially think. Yes, he wants to be king and that's why he killed Yona's kind father but his motivations and plans for the kingdom or even Yona herself are even now not so entirely simple or clear. I won't spoil too much regarding him, but he's definitely an interesting enigma even to his own generals who don't all know what he did.

And then there's Yoon and the dragons. Again, I won't spoil too much for those who haven't read it yet, but they are all such fun, varied personalities (and some with heart-wrenching backstories) that when you put them together one by one and have them play off each other (and especially Hak) it's fun beyond measure. I also like that although it is a bit of a reverse harem, they're not all falling over each other to flirt with Yona. Their feelings toward her are all different and while some attempt to flirt (jokingly or otherwise) it's not the main focus of the story or only intended for fanservice to the girls. Again, the characters are what really make this good.

And the anime? One of my favorite anime adaptations. The animation and music is good, the plot stays true and all the hilarity is intact. Even after reading all the manga up to date, it's still one that I look forward to watching every week. And next week, the chubby obligatory cute animal squirrel makes an appearance. Horray!

The story may seem uninteresting (the characters might even seem typical or cliche), but it gets more interesting as the story develops. There's a lot of character development, and interesting characters are also added as the story goes on.
The story does have its bad/boring moments, of course.
The MC may seem like a weak female lead (at first), but give the story time.